Hall of Fame Ballot Review – Harold Baines

Around this time last year, I went through and reviewed the case for a number of players for the Hall of Fame, and whether or not I thought that they deserved to be enshrined in the Hall. I’ll be doing this again this year, and for players I reviewed previously, I will revisit my vote and see if it has changed in a year’s time. Theoretically, this should remain the same, but there’s always a chance I am now a whole year wiser than I was last year. Today’s candidate is one that I looked at last year, Harold Baines

Baines was eligible for the Hall for the fourth time in the 2010 class (2009), and you can find what I wrote last year below. He finished the voting last year with 33 votes out of a possible 539 ballots (6.1%), well shy of enshrinement. He has hovered right between 5 % and 6 %, and 33 last year was his high water mark.

The Case for Baines
Baines was one of the top designated hitters of the 80’s and 90’s, amassing 2866 career hits, 488 doubles, 384 home runs, and a career line of .289/.356/.465. He made 6 All-Star appearances, and had a career OPS+ of 120.

The Case Against Baines
Baines became a full-time designated hitter after the 1987 season due to knee problems. Unfortunately for him, that was only a mere 6 seasons into his career. 384 homeruns is also a fairly low total considering the era he played in.

Analysis
The first thing that stands out to me about Baines is the length of his career. I was very curious to see if his career totals were a product of prolonged excellence, or simply having a long career. So let’s take a look at his single seasonnumbers and determine whether he had that period of dominance in him or not.

He appears to have shown some flashes of dominance, posting 3 straight seasons (1989-1991) with an OPS+ over 130. His best season appears to have been 1984, when he posted an OPS+ of 142, with a .304/.361/.541 with 29 homers, 94 rbi, 28 doubles, 10 triples. From 1982-1987, Baines had at least 50 extra base hits and 81 rbi. He also had 4 seasons with 10 outfield assists or more during that time.

Overall, I think that Baines had a very good career. 2800+ hits and 300+ home runs are definitely the hallmarks of a very good hitter. But I just don’t see anything in either his season-to-season numbers or his career totals that really strike me as a dominant hitter, or worthy of the Hall of Fame.

MY VOTE: NO

My Thoughts for This Year

I really haven’t put a whole lot of thought into his case when compared to last season, but as I look at the numbers he just doesn’t jump out at me as a player to enshrine in the Hall of Fame. One thing I did look at this year that I really didn’t look too much at last year was who a player did in the statistic Wins Above Replacement (WAR). Using Baseball-Reference’s WAR calculation, Baines had a career WAR of 37.0 (38.1 on offense, -1.1 on defense). They view any season where a hitter posted a 5.0 or greater WAR as an All-Star caliber season, and Baines had none of those. The highest number of his career was 3.7 in 1991, and for a player who was primarily a designated hitter, his offensive numbers just don’t seem strong enough to me to warrant election.